# Multidisciplinary Processes Painting I · Analysis, Project and Presentation · https://tryals.app/learn/painting-i/multidisciplinary-processes ## Painting That Does Not Stay on the Canvas Multidisciplinary painting borrows procedures from other fields. This creates marks a brush cannot make. - **Painting and performance.** Yves Klein used human models as brushes in **1960**. The event is the work. - **Painting and photography.** Gerhard Richter began his photographic *Atlas* in **1962** as source material. - **Painting and instruction.** Sol LeWitt used written instructions for wall drawings from **1968**. The text is the work. - **Painting and architecture.** Katharina Grosse began spraying paint over entire rooms in **1998**. ### Working Relationships | Relation | Who decides | Whose name is on it | |---|---|---| | Assistance | Artist decides; assistant executes | Artist | | Collaboration | Both decide together | Both | | Commission | Artist decides within a client's brief | Artist, naming commissioner | Clarify these roles early to prevent ethical disputes. ### Managing Interfaces Projects fail at the **interfaces** between different media and people. For **n** people, there are **n(n-1)/2** interfaces between them. A team of three has 3 pairs. Five people share 10 interfaces, while eight people create 28. Large teams require a dedicated coordinator. ### Planning Arithmetic Dependent tasks add together sequentially. Consider five tasks of 12, 5, 3, 8 and 2 days, totaling 30 days. Halving the 12-day task with extra help shortens the schedule by **6 days**. Calculate material coverage explicitly. A wall of 24 square metres needs 4 litres per coat. Two coats require **8 litres** of paint. > **Common pitfall:** leaving documentation until the end. Ephemeral works survive only through recordings. Plan documentation at the start. ## Practice questions 7 of this lesson's 13 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app. ### 1. Why do multidisciplinary projects fail at the interfaces rather than in the making? Select every statement that is true of interfaces. A. They are the parts of a project most likely to be rehearsed in advance B. They are usually nobody's explicit responsibility C. They are the points where one person's output has to become another person's input D. Their number grows faster than the number of people involved **Answer:** B. They are usually nobody's explicit responsibility; C. They are the points where one person's output has to become another person's input; D. Their number grows faster than the number of people involved **Why:** The fourth is the opposite of what happens. Everyone rehearses their own contribution and nobody rehearses the handover, which is why the failure is always a file format, a mount, a power supply or a permission, the places where two rehearsed pieces of work meet for the first time on installation day. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/multidisciplinary-processes/why-do-multidisciplinary-projects-fail-at-the-interfaces-rather-than ### 2. Sort each described working relation by what it actually is. **Answer:** - Assistance: Artist directs aide, Fabricated stretcher - Collaboration: Equal joint authors, Duo co-equal creation - Commission: Hospital-briefed art, Sized publisher brief **Why:** The distinction that matters is who decides, not who does the physical work. An assistant may make every mark on the canvas and still be assisting; a collaborator may make none and still be collaborating. Writing this down at the start is the cheapest way to avoid the commonest ethical failure in a student project. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/multidisciplinary-processes/sort-each-described-working-relation-by-what-it-actually-is ### 3. Arrange these expansions of painting in the order they happened. **Answer:** 1. Yves Klein directs the first public Anthropometrie in Paris, 1960 2. Gerhard Richter begins assembling the Atlas of photographs and cuttings, 1962 3. Sol LeWitt's first wall drawing is executed from a written instruction, 1968 4. Brian O'Doherty publishes the Inside the White Cube essays, 1976 5. Katharina Grosse begins spraying acrylic directly onto architecture, 1998 **Why:** The 1960s cluster is not a coincidence. Within eight years painting is relocated into an event, into an archive, and into a text, and all three are attempts at the same problem: what a painting is if it is not primarily a hand-made surface. Grosse's answer thirty-eight years later is to make the surface the entire building. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/multidisciplinary-processes/arrange-these-expansions-of-painting-in-the-order-they-happened ### 4. Arrange the stages of an interdisciplinary production in the order they must be settled. **Answer:** 1. Agree who decides, who executes and whose name appears 2. Establish every point where one person's output becomes another's input 3. Test each of those handovers on the actual equipment 4. Build the individual components 5. Install, with the handovers already rehearsed **Why:** The third step looks premature and is the whole method. Testing a handover with a dummy file, a scrap mount and a borrowed cable costs an afternoon; discovering the same problem on installation day costs the exhibition. The components can wait, because they are the part everyone will do anyway. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/multidisciplinary-processes/arrange-the-stages-of-an-interdisciplinary-production-in-the-order ### 5. The chain of five tasks runs 12, 5, 3, 8 and 2 days in sequence. A second person halves the 12-day task. By how many days does the whole chain shorten? **Answer:** 6 (within ±1) **Why:** **6 days**, from 30 to 24. The saving is real and far smaller than the enthusiasm for adding people usually assumes, because nothing else in the chain moves. Halving the shortest task instead would save one day, which is why finding the longest one first is the only useful thing to do with a schedule. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/multidisciplinary-processes/the-chain-of-five-tasks-runs-12-5-3-8-and-2-days-in-sequence-a ### 6. A student's collaboration with a composer fails on installation day because the sound file will not play on the gallery's system and the projector mount does not fit the wall. Why is that a predictable failure rather than bad luck? A. Both are handovers between contributions, and handovers are the part nobody rehearses B. The two parts had unequal technical standards, so the lower-quality element failed under load C. A two-person collaboration creates too many communication channels without a project coordinator D. Interdisciplinary work is unstable because artists and composers use incompatible workflows **Answer:** A. Both are handovers between contributions, and handovers are the part nobody rehearses **Why:** Each collaborator rehearsed their own contribution and neither rehearsed the point where the two meet, which is exactly where both failures occurred. The fix is to test the handovers early on the actual equipment. Nothing here is about quality, and a solo project with the same two interfaces would fail identically. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/multidisciplinary-processes/a-students-collaboration-with-a-composer-fails-on-installation-day ### 7. Assistance and collaboration are structurally distinct modes of working rather than points on a scale of friendliness. What follows from this distinction when allocating credit in a multi-practitioner production? A. Assistance warrants joint authorship if labour is extensive B. Commissioned partners automatically share equal conceptual credit C. Delegated execution always transforms assistance into coproduction D. Collaboration requires shared attribution regardless of scale **Answer:** D. Collaboration requires shared attribution regardless of scale **Why:** Conflating labour volume with decision-making power obscures governance; assistance never yields shared naming purely through effort, whilst collaboration hinges on joint decision rights that mandate dual attribution. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/multidisciplinary-processes/assistance-and-collaboration-are-structurally-distinct-modes-of